The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) gubernatorial candidate in Lagos State, Jimi Agbaje is angry and has bared his mind… “I will free Lagos state from Alphabeta. Alpha Beta consulting receives percentage on every dime Lagos earn in taxes and revenues”.
“I could be here all day talking about Free Lagos. Let me start from the basic freedom of information Act, Lagos is still run like a closed shop, like a private company. Lagos has refused to domesticate the freedom of information bill, so we don’t know what plays out in Lagos. So we are talking of freedom to have access to exactly how they are running our government.”
“In the last 20 years, Lagos has spent some N7 trillion, and we are asking what have we got for N7 trillion? Are we getting value for money? Out of that N7 trillion, there is a private company that takes a percentage of that N7 trillion, and we are asking, for what purpose? There is private company fund collector, Alphabeta or whatever, collects that much.”
“We don’t know the percentage; it could be 10 percent, it could be 8 percent. It is not about being legal, it is about being moral. It is against standard practice because we don’t see what they are doing and we don’t even know what the percentage is, and I don’t see value for money, so its freedom from that.”
“I have no feud with Bola Tinubu. Tinubu is my friend, but we disagree on principle and brands of democracy. There was never a feud, I think it is very wrong to say that there was a feud, there has never been a feud. It wasn’t about anger that made me leave Tinubu’s camp, it is about principle, don’t forget that even after that, offers were given to me, it is not about that, it is about principles. I don’t have any feud with anybody.”
“Tinubu is still my friend. We were political associates, we were in the same camp, and in 2007, I felt the way democracy was being practiced by him was not the way I understood democracy to be practiced, so I took an option to opt out.”